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Chicago Bulls 97 – Atlanta Hawks 58: Game Grades

January 15th, 2013 at 9:03 PM By Avi Saini

I'm still in disbelief. I cannot believe just how lopsided this game was, especially after the shellacking that Atlanta dished out to Chicago the last time these to teams met. Honestly, there is nothing more that I can say that Caleb hasn't. So I'm just going to move onto grades if that's fine with everyone.

I won't lie. Noah was kind of abysmal on offense tonight. If this were a normal game, I'd probably harp him on it quite a bit since a 2 of 11 night is nothing but detrimental to the team. However, given his absolute dominance on the boards and the way he shut down everyone he even looked at on defense, I can't slam him. It also helps that the 2-11 shooting wasn't exactly detrimental either.

The stat line tells you enough about Boozer's night. Offensively he was efficient yet again. He crashed the boards hard and earned his eighth double-double in nine games. At this point, Boozer is now leading the Eastern conference with the most double-doubles on the season. Yes, he's passed Lebron. That's reason for an A by itself.

Defensively, Boozer actually showed a pulse tonight too. He altered a bunch of shots and even got a block. A BLOCK. It's so rare!

Great game for Boozer

A+

Luol Deng

Pts: 18 Reb: 2 Ast: 1Blk: 1

Deng had yet another good night. Offensively he was extremely efficient as he shot a phenomenal 78% from the floor. Granted a majority of those buckets came during a hot streak of shooting but oh well. Defensively he was also phenomenal, as usual. Great game for Deng.

A+

Rip Hamilton

Pts: 8Reb: 1Ast: 2Blk: 0

Hamilton was… forgettable. Not to say that he had a terrible game. While offensively he wasn't the most efficient player, he still managed to get it done on defense. However, unlike some of the other players, nothing he did exactly stood out to me as great or exceptional.

Again, good night, but he needs to have more of an impact (or at least make me remember something) to bump him up.

B

Kirk Hinrich

Pts: 1Reb: 3Ast: 3Blk: 2

Oh Hinrich. How typical that on a night in which everyone dominated their opponents, you post such a poor stat line. For a guy playing point guard, with how much scoring Chicago had, you think you would have had more than 3 assists.

Hinrich is lucky his defense was passable tonight otherwise he would have had a terrible grade. And if you feel I'm being too hard on Hinrich, you're probably right.

B-

Bench

The bench had to have played well tonight to keep Atlanta to 58 points. That's all that needs to be said. That and Taj Gibson's posterization of Anthony Tolliver was so beautiful I've had the Youtube video running almost constantly.

Whatever Thibodeau did to correct the mistakes from the Phoenix game and from the last time these two teams met in Atlanta clearly worked to perfection.

A+

Team Grade

I wont lie, the team deserves an A+ tonight. However, I'm going to be petty since I really wanted to see Atlanta held to 48 points on the night. I wanted to see a new lowest points scored in a game record set tonight. So I'm dinging them for that.

A-

What I Expect For Next Time:

I want to say this kind of defensive performance, however I feel like the game would get too boring. So let's just say 75% of this defensive performance and 100% of the offensive production.

Hope you all enjoyed laughing at the Atlanta Hawks performance and being amazed at the Bulls defensive dominance. The next game is tomorrow night, Wednesday January 16th, in Toronto against the Raptors.